Making the jump to Linux - advice needed

masterluke · 3 Aug 2011 at 17:41

You should have empathy there already on the "internet" menu. It supports MSN. See if that works for you.

PermaBanned · 3 Aug 2011 at 18:50

Personally i prefer Pidgin, but that's one thing you'll learn about Open Source software - you're spoilt for choice

Besides Firefox, Chromium, Epiphany or whatever for a browser, Rythmbox, Banshee or whatever for a music player and OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Gnumeric and AbiWord or whatever for office stuff you can generally just find programs as and when you need them.

Just to check, you do know to 'mostly' install from the Software/Package manager before trying anything else, right?

Scythian · 3 Aug 2011 at 20:27

PermaBanned said:
Personally i prefer Pidgin, but that's one thing you'll learn about Open Source software - you're spoilt for choice

Besides Firefox, Chromium, Epiphany or whatever for a browser, Rythmbox, Banshee or whatever for a music player and OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Gnumeric and AbiWord or whatever for office stuff you can generally just find programs as and when you need them.

Just to check, you do know to 'mostly' install from the Software/Package manager before trying anything else, right?

Well that was what I was doing subconsciously anyway

Is it possible to change the appearance of it? for something a bit more ...well, interesting?
Will look for the office stuff

PermaBanned · 3 Aug 2011 at 21:00

Scythian said:
Is it possible to change the appearance of it? for something a bit more ...well, interesting?

Infinitely. What do you class as interesting?

Scythian · 3 Aug 2011 at 21:31

Anything a bit more colourful or 'user friendly'
Add-ons or such would be enough

PermaBanned · 3 Aug 2011 at 22:06

Right, so currently is looks something like this, yes?

Would you prefer something like, say... this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or even this?

Basically, if you can think of it (and have the skill), you can make it. So might help to be a bit more specific in what you want

Scythian · 3 Aug 2011 at 22:34

Second last one appealed the most although I was impressed with all of them.

I'm looking for a way to change the appearance of Pidgin maybe? or any things I could do to change it around a bit?

Scythian · 4 Aug 2011 at 13:56

Right now it looks like this:

http://postimage.org/image/9d36p7wk/
Although I'm considering changing to the new ubuntu, this one will be just fine for now.

(Having trouble getting the image and I don't really fancy learning how... I'm not a morning person

Scythian · 19 Aug 2011 at 20:02

Ok, So I have been playing around with Linux for awhile now, learning the basics of using the terminal etc.

Do wondering how do I exactly go from

to the desktops above?

Seeing as I'm only running Linux on a netbook will the above desktops slow it down?

SubFocus · 20 Aug 2011 at 11:33

Could somebody list the name of each distro posted above? I know ubuntu, fedora, etc but some i'm not sure of.

InfiniteNoise · 20 Aug 2011 at 12:49

First 4 is Ubuntu, Linux Mint, OpenSUSE and Fedora, not sure about the rest, last one is MeeGo.

8th appears to be Arch Linux, the logo looks like it, the distro is customizable.

Scythian · 20 Aug 2011 at 14:29

So the only way to change my desktop is to change my distro?

InfiniteNoise · 20 Aug 2011 at 14:37

Not necessarily but if you want to change the desktop environment (Gnome, KDE, etc..) then it's recommended to change distro and get one with the DE you want.

Scythian · 20 Aug 2011 at 14:46

Could you explain the difference between Gnome and KDE please?

PermaBanned · 20 Aug 2011 at 16:27

Ubuntu
Mint
OpenSUSE
Fedora (or anything with Gnome 3)
Arch with some flavour of tiling window manager
Arch with Openbox
Arch with DWM
Arch with XFCE
Arch with Openbox
Meego

It's easy enough to change your desktop environment within any given distribution and set it up so that you choose between them every time you log on.

Gnome and KDE are similar in that they are both compositing, I believe KDE is based on QT from Nokia. Gnome was created because some people thought KDE was too bloated and just not what they were looking for, but that was a long time ago and things have changed. That said, KDE does use more resources than Gnome but not to the extent that it would bother you on any decent spec system. At the user level KDE is more like Aero - flashy and shiny, wheras Gnome is somewhat minimalistic.

There's tons of customization to be done within the Window Managers before you go changing for another default look, however.

Scythian · 20 Aug 2011 at 17:25

Ah, thanks!

Could you link some resources that I could use to try changing around my current desktop? (10.04 Netbook)

PermaBanned · 20 Aug 2011 at 17:33

Well generally it's just a case of "sudo apt-get install [insert window manager here]" then selecting it in GDM (the log in screen). Then if you want to install more themes from, say, gnome look probably with drag and drop - there's tons of guides on that if you just google it.

Might be worth looking at Conky too

Huw · 20 Aug 2011 at 19:22

Idartalis said:
Not necessarily but if you want to change the desktop environment (Gnome, KDE, etc..) then it's recommended to change distro and get one with the DE you want.

Really? Nothing wrong with just installing multiple DEs and switching between them at the login manager in my opinion. It's a nice, easy way of testing them, then you can just delete all but the one you settle on.

InfiniteNoise · 20 Aug 2011 at 19:59

Not that there's anything wrong with installing multiple DEs, but from experience, installing KDE onto Ubuntu installation and removing KDE later never ends well (I probably did something wrong, idk), I ended up having to do a reinstall.